› added 4 years ago

149

TIL The characterization of Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars saga as an ambitious and ruthless politician dismantling a democratic republic to achieve supreme power is in part inspired by Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Adolf Hitler. Other elements of the character come from Richard Nixon.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

yQ71p TIL according to The Specialty Coffee Association of America, the Kopi Luwak (digested coffee cherries, which have been eaten and defecated by a Civet) which costs US$700 per kilogram, is sold for the story, not for quality. The coffee's good acidity and flavor is diminished by the process.
wLXKE TIL there is a "forest" covering over 100 acres consisting of over 40,000 trunks of a single tree. The trunks are all connected to the same root system and collectively weigh 6000 metric tons. The root system is an estimated 80,000 years old, though each trunk only lives about 130 years.
4XA5a TIL that in 1950, to test the potential impact of a biological attack, the US Navy released a supposedly harmless bacteria over San Francisco, hospitalizing several people and killing one.
QNkGe TIL that there are hundreds of totally free online courses from universities like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Caltech, and others in a huge range of subjects
4kK0b TIL The deadliest aviation accident in US history was American flight 191 at O'Hare Airport in Chicago in 1979. The DC-10 passenger plane crashed just after takeoff, killing all 273 people aboard. The FAA promptly banned all DC-10s from flying in US airspace pending investigation.